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Review:

Cherry Bear says:It takes talent to write a Dom/Teddy/Victoire that's not utterly cliche. But it takes pure genius to write a Dom/Teddy/Victoire that's not utterly cliche even though it works out happily and perfectly for everyone :o And you are definitely pure genius. Because as unlikely and too-perfect-to-be-real as this entire scenario is, you somehow made it work anyway! I honestly can never understand how you do it. You just make all of their confessions and feelings and dramatics fit into everyday life so...undramatically. It's the best!

I'm usually a strict Teddy/Victoire kind of girl, but you really made me root for Teddy/Dom here. And I think it's because this was chock full of such amazing characterization, as your writing usually is. I really felt like I understood Dom and her relationship with Teddy and her sister. And then there you had these sporadically insightful bits that just portrayed all of their personalities so well and succinctly and really stood out to me, like: "Victoire wasn't the kind of person to skip from man to man; she devoted herself fully to everyone she cared about, it was one of her best qualities. She didn't take men for granted, like our cousin Rose. She was true to herself, too; if Victoire loved Dwyn more than Ted, she would know it, and by Merlin she would act on it."

I loved this description of Victoire - firstly, because it doesn't paint her as some evil back-stabbing girlfriend and, secondly, because it's through Dominique's perspective and thus says as much about Dominique as it does about Victoire. How much she really loves and trusts her sister. It made it very easy to understand why she wouldn't admit to liking Teddy and why she hadn't acted on it. And, I have to say, it's very refreshing to see Dominique and Victoire have an actually good relationship. It's weirdly uncommon.

Anyway, like I said, you had me rooting for Teddy/Dom basically from the beginning of this story. Their interaction was so easy (can't think of the right word...non-awkward?) and it just seemed like they really understood each other and Dom noted that they were birds of a feather and squee. And then how Dom liked his normal appearance as opposed to the blonde appearance - and how Victoire's new preference for blondes seems to foreshadow the existence of, er, Dwyn. And then how Dominique makes fun of Dwyn's name at the most inopportune. It was just all-around brilliant and, basically, you're kind of brilliant.

It's interesting to compare this with Welcome to the Circus, which is so starkly different in its take on the relationship between these three. I find it kind of amazing that you wrote both of these with such different personalities for these characters - it seems like it would be difficult to handle different versions of the same characters in different stories, but you're quite amazing so I'm sure it was no trouble for you at all ;)

I think I'm running out of things to praise you about or anything at all constructive for you, but I'll try. The only thing that I can say is that I wish we could've known more about Dominique's feelings. I understand she might've been in denial the whole time and thus unwilling to even think about her feelings for Teddy, but at least at the end it would've been nice to get a peek into her thoughts - beyond her picking the easiest choice. Even just the smallest hint of true happiness or an actual realization that she did have more-than-platonic feelings for him, or something. Maybe something more than just: "I was surprised to find that loving Ted didn't feel as repulsive an idea when it came out of his mouth." Leaving it at that just seems so.objective. Detached, almost.

But that's really about it. I found this very enjoyable; it gave me all the warm fuzzy feelings inside. And your summary is clever but, then again, they always are, aren't they? (:

Cherry Bear

Author's Response: Wow, thank you for the generous review! This is an older story of mine, so when I look at it all I see are things that I could fix. But I do remember how driven I was by Dom's character, and I think that's what pulled everything together. I totally agree with you that I could include some more of her own thoughts. If I ever come back to this, that's what I'll pay attention to. This response doesn't nearly do your incredibly detailed review justice, but I've never been great at responding to praise. So, thank you so much! It's always a pleasure to read your reviews.